If we can think of men­tal health and well­be­ing in terms of pre­ven­tion it will serve us well in our lives al­to­geth­er but, even bet­ter now, as we be­gin to rein­te­grate af­ter a pe­ri­od of iso­la­tion and work­ing from home. Our emo­tion­al health, while tra­di­tion­al­ly dis­re­gard­ed or placed sec­ond to oth­er health is­sues, re­mains equal­ly im­por­tant as our phys­i­cal well­be­ing.

Some­times I toy with the idea that men­tal health should be con­sid­ered as more im­por­tant than phys­i­cal health giv­en what we know about peo­ple, per­fect “in body” who may have suf­fered the “loss of the mind.”

COVID-19 pre­ven­tion and mit­i­ga­tion mea­sures have come with very dras­tic changes for every­one. Still, the psy­cho­log­i­cal ef­fects of so­cial dis­tanc­ing, iso­lat­ing and quar­an­tine are greater for some than oth­ers as we each are asked to quick­ly adapt to very strin­gent and stress­ful mea­sures.

Work-from-home arrange­ments, while ap­pear­ing lux­u­ri­ous and idyl­lic have turned out to be far more chal­leng­ing for many peo­ple. Some have been com­pli­cat­ed with hav­ing to man­age a work day with the en­tire fam­i­ly present, in­clud­ing younger chil­dren, and hav­ing to be par­ent, spouse, cook and dish­wash­er, plus pro­vide com­fort to your fam­i­ly dur­ing work­ing hours.

The shar­ing of com­mu­nal spaces for work sta­tions where homes do not have des­ig­nat­ed study or work­spaces was a tough one for many of my friends and, in some in­stances, hav­ing tech­ni­cal chal­lenges with In­ter­net and work in­ter­faces was/is at times a bit daunt­ing.

Now that we are ex­pect­ed to re­turn to our pre­vi­ous work­ing arrange­ments, or some sem­blance of that space, the stress­es are height­ened.

Our fam­i­lies are nec­es­sar­i­ly go­ing to leave home for var­ied di­rec­tions: Would we be safe from in­fec­tion? How much phys­i­cal dis­tance should we and can we rea­son­ably re­tain in our work­places? Is T&T go­ing to suf­fer a sec­ond wave as sci­en­tists are pre­dict­ing for every­where else in the world? What does that mean for me?

When would we be able to get a vac­cine? How and when would we know if there are ad­verse ef­fects to any of what is def­i­nite­ly very rushed med­ical in­ter­ven­tions? And the ques­tions flow ad in­fini­tum and most­ly with­out us ever voic­ing them but con­tin­u­al­ly liv­ing in the stress and anx­i­ety they pro­duce on/in our mind and bod­ies.

While we hope our man­agers and em­ploy­ers and the State as our largest em­ploy­er are be­ing coun­selled and pre­pared for our re­turn-to-work agen­da, each of us must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing our men­tal health and well­be­ing as we pre­pare to re­turn to some sem­blance of the work life we once had.

Here are some ba­sics for deal­ing with the man­age­ment of per­son­al stress and try­ing to strike work-life bal­ance:-

Talk­ing about your feel­ings is one of the best ways to pro­tect your men­tal health and well­be­ing. No one should dis­count the val­ue of coun­sel and how it works to help us cope in our worst chal­lenges. Of­ten we car­ry around our anx­i­eties too long in our heads think­ing ei­ther we will be seen as weak to speak up or we would be re­gard­ed as bro­ken if peo­ple knew what trou­bles us. But talk­ing and re­ceiv­ing ap­pro­pri­ate coun­sel is our best tool to nav­i­gate ei­ther one’s work-from-home sit­u­a­tion or for re­turn­ing to the work­place.

The best of us can be­come over­whelmed in cir­cum­stances far less chal­leng­ing than our cur­rent sce­nario. Ask­ing for help is an ex­cel­lent strat­e­gy at this time. Some com­pa­nies al­ready of­fer em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­grammes (EAP), use these ser­vices. At this time, in my opin­ion, every com­pa­ny, or­gan­i­sa­tion or of­fice should of­fer work­place well­be­ing in­ter­ven­tions. It is my hope that the State would em­ploy a blue­print for an­swer­ing peo­ple’s call for help, pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship at the na­tion­al lev­el, es­pe­cial­ly be­cause stig­ma and prej­u­dices about men­tal well­be­ing and men­tal ill­ness­es re­main preva­lent is­sues here.

Maybe this is a good time to ask for a break from work if your work pro­gramme can al­low it. If your stress and anx­i­eties are high about the un­cer­tain­ties of this time, it may be a good time to ne­go­ti­ate your va­ca­tion rather than re­turn to the of­fice.

If you must con­tin­ue go­ing to the work­place, maybe it is time to rene­go­ti­ate your hours. Is there a pos­si­bil­i­ty for flex­itime? Can we con­sid­er less of­fice days and com­bine the work week with work-from-home hours once the tasks are com­plet­ed in a time­ly fash­ion?

Em­ploy­ers and man­agers must give con­sid­er­a­tion to in­di­vid­ual sit­u­a­tions and must al­so ben­e­fit from the coun­sel of in­dus­tri­al/or­gan­i­sa­tion­al psy­chol­o­gists now more than ever.

Re­turn­ing to work re­quires a lot more tol­er­ance, kind­ness and com­pas­sion not just from oth­ers but from our­selves for our­selves. No one should be con­sid­ered as be­ing weak, pre­tend­ing or mak­ing ex­cus­es, but each per­son’s fear or anx­i­ety must be tak­en on mer­it.